NoisyPorkchop wrote:My growing-up years were rather difficult and my home life was very frugal as my Dad was the breadwinner and Mom stayed home. Money was very tight. Unfortunately I think money was tighter than it had to be as both of my parents had some pretty expensive cigarette and alcohol habits that, looking back, really ate up any extra money that could have been used for other things. They always seemed to have their booze and cigs no matter what. Mom used a lot of coupons and double coupons when she could and we ALWAYS ate at home and restaurant dining was an extremely rare experience. Once every few years from what I remember and only if it was something special like my Mom's birthday or something. But my Mom could cook good standard food and nothing was wasted and you sure didn't get to be a picky eater at my house! You ate what Mom cooked or you starved. I will never forget my four-year old sister fighting my Mom over eating canned peas that was served with dinner one night. She cried and cried and my Mom wouldn't relent. My sister finally was soooo exhausted she fell asleep at the table, those peas still on her plate. My Mom told my sister to go to bed. By the look on my sister's face I think she thought she got out of eating those canned peas. Come morning my sister and I sat at the kitchen table waiting for our breakfast. I was served a bowl of Peaches-N-Cream oatmeal and my Mom plopped down that dinner plate of canned peas in front of my sister. You should have seen the look on my sister's face! LOL! My Mom told her she could cry all she wanted but she wasn't getting up from that table without eating those peas. She ate them. With tears in her eyes, but she ate them, lol. Neither of us fought with her ever again over what was served at meals
We always had some pretty dilapidated cars. Our 1970 Ford van was a sight as the rear doors had been smashed in an accident so my Dad took them off and replaced them with two plywood "doors" stuck to the hinges. Peeling blue paint and some crappy plywood rear doors and you could hear that van a mile away, oh boy! At one point we had 6 cars but only one *sort of* ran; the rest were in various states of decay laying around our yard. It seemed like my folks didn't care what the cars looked like, as long as it ran. One of our cars they drove hadn't been washed in so long that it actually had moss growing on it.
My younger sister and I always wore hand-me-down clothes from garage sales. Never had any trendy clothes, usually outdated or out of style as that is what you would only find at a garage sale. My sister and I would come home from school and just find a huge pile of clothes laying on our beds and Mom would tell us to sort them out and find what fits and that is what we wore. It created a lot of squabbles between me and sis as we would fight over a piece of clothing that we both coveted. The only times we ever got nice new clothes when we were kids was at Christmas and that was because my Aunt and Grandmother would send us new spiffy clothes. My sister and I thought we were in heaven! We finally got Mom to give us a clothes allowance once we were in junior high/high school so we were able to go to the mall and use our tiny stipend (only once a year so make it last) to buy some new stylish clothes. We really thought we were something once we were able to do that, lol.
Basically we always had a roof over our head, bills were minimally paid, parents always paid cash for any cars, pretty much paid cash for everything. I remember having big gardens as a kid and my Mom canning and preserving everything, her attempts at sewing our clothes from hand, she cut all our hair, used coupons at the grocery store, she either used a laundromat when we were kids or hung the clothes on a clothesline; we didn't get a washer/dryer until I was in my late teens as my grandfather (Mom's dad) passed away and she got a tiny amount in inheritance and she bought the set and a few other things. There just wasn't the easy credit to get into like today so I don't think they had horrid debt, just not a lot of money to go around.
I just wish both parents were still around today (can't drink/smoke heavily every day and expect to live a long life) because I would love to pick Mom's brain for her frugal cooking recipes I remember eating as a kid and how she managed to squeeze a penny as long as she could. Sorry to be so long winded, lol, but all in all I am a better person for having lived a lean life as a kid because it has given me some resilience as an adult. I look at my very *spoiled* 19 year old stepdaughter and listen to her whine over trivial things (she was already 12 when her Dad and I met) and she really thinks she has it hard when, honestly, quite nearly everything has been handed to her. *Sigh*
The peas for breakfast story reminds me as to how strict some parents were. I remember a few like that, and lots of spankings to go along with.
Gosh, old worn out, used cars, that was us, too, when I was growing up. Never once did we have a new car in all the time I was younger. Mind you, thinking back on those old days, few families drove brand new vehicles that I remember.
I, too, remember getting allowance money to buy what I wanted, and being reminded by mom to save for a rainy day. Between allowance money and babysitting money, I did fairly well and always had money for clothes, a movie, etc.
As a young child I recall going to the Laundromat regularly with mom. Diapers, clothing, towels, you name it, mom laundered it at the Laundromat! I remember always being infatuated with the lost-and-found section, where something or another could be found pinned-up on the wall and baskets full of things sat on a small table. Great memories.
Speaking of cigarette smoking, I remember my mom rolling her own cigarettes using those filter-tipped paper cigarette tubes and cut tobacco in a can. She had one of those nifty cigarette rolling machines where you put loose tobacco in, then slipped a cigarette tube over a small pointed hollow opening, then pushed the slide across the top of the machine, and ta-da, a homemade cigarette! Always thought that thing was one of the neatest things! When mom had the extra money she'd buy store-bought cigarettes.
This thread has been such fun... so many memories.